Torch, Summer 1994

My uncle was very harsh when it advancing toward us. Mother went came to disciplining us. We loved to to the chief doctor, a Nazi, to ask play with Polish children but he permission to take me home but he would not let us play with them, refused. He assured her that we were because he felt that we belonged to not losing the war and that they the so-called "Aryan master race." If could always get me to safety with a you teach a child something long Red Cross train. My mother did not enough, even if it is a lie, a child obey and carried me home. A few starts to believe it; yet we often days later, the train that I would defied my uncle's instructions and have been on was bombed and sneaked out and had a good time destroyed. with the Polish children. Many of my family members By now we had moved into our escaped in 1945 from Poland and we own villa in a village nearby. Often made our way to West Germany. My our governess would take ....------~ with a family who knew the Lord Jesus and loved Him very much. The father had both legs blown off at the Russian battlefront and he had a heart disease, yet they were the most joyful people that you have ever seen. Somehow I was jealous of that joy and peace and wanted to find out what it was they possessed. I would find out later. I decided to go to Canada for a year. Before I left, I saw the movie, "Ten Commandments." It really touched my heart. I borrowed a us to the store and, on the way to the village, we had to cross a railroad track. On one of our excursions, we saw cattle cars filled with people, some of them peeking out the windows that were secured with iron bars. When I asked my governess why all these people were stuffed in there, she answered "Oh, I don't know. Let's just go and get the stuff we need." Looking back, I wonder if she knew that these were Jewish people who were taken to concentration camps. Jews were portrayed to us as the vermin of this world. The propaganda was well aimed through billboards and on benches All across Europe, Jews were packed into cattle cars for transport to concentration camps. with the words "For Aryans only– Jews not allowed." The hatred and anger towards the Jews was hard for us children to understand. In the summer of 1944, towards the end of the war, I was brought to a veterans hospital full of German soldiers who had come back from the battlefront. I was there for six months because the doctors thought I had bone cancer, but it turned out to be a thorn in my foot that was not discovered. My mother, a Red Cross nurse herself, worked in another veterans hospital. She knew, having talked to the battle-worn soldiers, that the war was coming to an end. One day, she heard gun fire. The Russians were Torch 14 father was still in Japan. Jesus was protecting us already then, but we did not know it. We were traveling on a train through a burning forest, but we were never even singed. Sometimes we had to sleep outside or in a train station and, on one occasion, we woke up in the morning only to realize that we had slept next to an unexploded bomb. Following the war, I went to high school in West Germany and bits and pieces started to filter through to us about what we Germans had done in the war. It was still so new and our teachers and professors would not tell us what really happened. I guess they felt ashamed. Later on, I worked at a YMCA. There I lived Bible and checked the validity of the movie. I was amazed at the reality of God and wondered, "What do I do now?" One day in August, as I read, I came to the passage of the plagues in Egypt and hail was pounding against my window. I fell down in front of my bed and said, "Oh Lord, you are here! You must be so powerful!" That was the first time I really got in touch with the living God. I went to Montreal, Canada, to work in the Montreal General Hospital. Some patients had a number engraved in their arms. It was an identification number from a concentration camp. And here I was, a German. I was frightened and